Police: Collin County man forced runaway teens into prostitution

Police say a Princeton man recruited two underage teenagers and forced them to work as prostitutes in northern Dallas last week.

Tommy Debell Griffin, 32, has been charged with two counts of trafficking of persons under 18 into prostitution. He has also been charged with possession of marijuana and manual delivery of cocaine.

In an arrest warrant affidavit, police said the two girls had run away from a shelter for at-risk teens. Police said Griffin, an acquaintance with one of the girls, picked them up and put them up in a Red Roof Inn in Far North Dallas.

For six days, he drove her to bars along the North Central Expressway and in the Park Lane area, police said in the affidavit. There, the girls worked as prostitutes and were instructed to give him all of the money, police said.

On Nov. 15, one of the teens told personnel at a hospital that she had been forced into prostitution. Police came to the hospital and recorded the girl calling Griffin to come get her. When he showed up, he was arrested. He later confessed on video, police said.

Police said they also found cocaine and marijuana in Griffin’s pockets when he was arrested. He is being held in Dallas County Jail in lieu of $55,500 bail.

Griffin, a felon, spent much of the last decade in state and federal prisons before his Sept. 6 release this year.

During his sentencing in federal prison after he pleaded guilty for his role in a drug dealing conspiracy case, Griffin apologized to the court and his family, according to a court transcript:

“Drugs have been a bad, you know, thing in my life for the past years. I had just got out of prison in ’04 and I was picked up on this case in ’05. But I mean, I was trying to get my life and stuff back together. Being in society is kind of hard, you know, being a convicted felon. But I’m not justifying what I did. I know it was wrong, what I did, because I have dealt drugs in the past. And I just want to apologize and say I’m sorry for what I did.”

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